In the middle of negotiating a contract? Not sure if the RFP you're about to put out really covers all your bases? Would an outside expert opinion on the SLAs you're about to agree on make you more comfortable?

In olden days, folks made a distinction between labor and work. Men and women did work. Work served both heaven and earth; ennobling workers, carrying on the culture, and pleasing God. Brutes (sometimes human) did labor, which required only force.

Agility is far too precious to be treated only as a software development method. Instead, it plays a significant role in rendering an entire organization agile.

Abstraction is one of the fundamental concepts of architecture. Wikipedia defines abstraction as: “a process or result of generalization, removal of properties, or distancing of ideas from objects.

Enterprise Patterns are an excellent way to involve all stakeholders in the architectural debate. If you are new to Enterprise Patterns, this webinar is a great way to get started.

Mainstream organizations don't want to just use Hadoop in a standalone manner. They want to integrate the insights discovered with Hadoop into their data warehousing and BI environments.

Mainstream organizations don't want to just use Hadoop in a standalone manner. They want to integrate the insights discovered with Hadoop into their data warehousing and BI environments.

Agility is far too precious to be treated only as a software development method. Instead, it plays a significant role in rendering an entire organization agile. Such organizational agility, however, requires a combination of agile values and principles together with formal business analysis (BA) work.

Cutter Business Technology Strategies Director Ron Blitstein, Piet Ribbers, and I are working toward a book on the characteristics of successful and effective relationships between IT and business organizations and their managers.

The enterprise Big Data landscape includes various types of data, including historical, transactional, images, and message-based streams. In turn, this data can be structured or unstructured. Importantly, the treatment and analysis of data is different for different types of data (see Figure 1). For example:

Business resilience has become increasingly important in the wake of an unusual period of natural disasters around the globe, and new technologies and organizational models have yielded improved capabilities to move forward in the face of any disaster.

In my last Advisor ("Cloud Architecture: Leveraging Strategies, Blueprints, and Roadmaps -- What's Different Today?"), I shared some common chal

For the past 20-plus years, the Web has been based on a document-centric model despite recent workarounds to provide enterprise-quality applications.

For the past 20-plus years, the Web has been based on a document-centric model, despite recent workarounds to provide enterprise-quality applications, new types of user experiences, and multimedia and real-time capabilities. With a renewed focus on applications, programming interfaces, enhanced graphics, offline behavior, and modern communications, the Web is entering its next phase of life.

The good news for mainstream organizations that want to conduct Big Data analysis using Hadoop is that a lack of comprehensive, supported environments no longer remains the most significant barrier to adoption.

The good news for mainstream organizations that want to conduct Big Data analysis using Hadoop is that a lack of comprehensive, supported environments no longer remains the most significant barrier to adoption.

Information technology in the modern large enterprise is becoming increasingly expensive. With new IT systems going online every week and an ever-increasing range of products and systems flowing into the enterprise, there is a vital need for a governance structure to control the amount and quality of IT systems on which the business is based.

Creating an evolutionary process in development has been seen as a perspective belonging more to the philosophical and spiritual realms than to the so-called scientific realm. An evolutionary approach, however, provides for sustainability of growth.

Creating an evolutionary process in development has been seen as a perspective belonging more to the philosophical and spiritual realms than to the so-called scientific realm. An evolutionary approach, however, provides for sustainability of growth.

Creating an evolutionary process in development has been seen as a perspective belonging more to the philosophical and spiritual realms than to the so-called scientific realm. An evolutionary approach, however, provides for sustainability of growth.

Consumerization is the impetus for a renewal of IT. BYOD will spur creativity, increase agility, and bring new benefits to business.

Consumerization will obliterate the hard-won efficiencies of standards and bring chaos to downsized IT operations areas. BYOD is the new technical Tower of Babel.

Consumerization is the impetus for a renewal of IT. BYOD will spur creativity, increase agility, and bring new benefits to business.

Consumerization will obliterate the hard-won efficiencies of standards and bring chaos to downsized IT operations areas. BYOD is the new technical Tower of Babel.

The consumerization of IT is a catchy term for a sneaky trend that has been going on for at least 10 years, in which consumer devices and applications are increasingly being incorporated into the workplace. While the enterprise was spending the past decade downsizing, outsourcing, and otherwise squeezing IT down to its essentials, all in the name of efficiency and cost savings, practically all of the innovation, revolutionary products, and hot technologies were being developed directly for the consumer sector.

The consumerization of IT is a catchy term for a sneaky trend that has been going on for at least 10 years, in which consumer devices and applications are increasingly being incorporated into the workplace. While the enterprise was spending the past decade downsizing, outsourcing, and otherwise squeezing IT down to its essentials, all in the name of efficiency and cost savings, practically all of the innovation, revolutionary products, and hot technologies were being developed directly for the consumer sector.